FH Ventures: Microalgae Foods and Squid Fabric 🦑

Our favorite contrarian writer Sam is back with another instant classic piece.

Last year Sam was :

- Early to predict the fertiliser price hikes.- Early to predict that valuations would drop.- Early to highlight the e-groccery scaling struggles.

This time Sam takes a close look at the macroeconomic conditions impacting the global economy, and FoodTech in particular.

Fair warning - It's not pretty.

If you're active in FoodTech - this is an essential read.

TLDR:

Find below 5 new startups of the week and 5 good reads.

🌿 FUL Foods B.V. (Just Opened)

HQ: NetherlandsRaising: $5M USDExisting investors: SHIFT InvestStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Julia StreuliPitch: "Building the future-proof nutrition brand for the climate change generation from life's source and sustaining force, microalgae. Developing sustainable branded ingredients from Spirulina to a) use in our FUL® brand of delicious, nutritious, sustainable, signature naturally blue and on-the-go f&b products and b) sell b2b as FUL® ingredients."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

👨‍🌾 Offset AI (Just Opened)

HQ: USARaising: $4M USDExisting investors: n/aStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Adrian Kerester (Stanford grad)Pitch: "Offset AI delivers actionable acre-by-acre insights at a low cost by deploying a large sensor network, tagging the captured data, and using AI to deliver growing insights. We remove barriers to adoption by providing hardware and insights as an easy to use subscription based service.."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🥪 Renegade Foods (Just Opened)

HQ: USARaising: $2M USDExisting investors: Planthesis, New Climate Ventures, Sustainable Food Ventures, GlassWall SyndicateStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Iona CampbellPitch: "Renegade Foods is the first shelf-stable vegan deli meat company set to scale and take over the $305B global deli meat market with its fermented meats made entirely from plants. With a focus on protein and nutrient bioavailability, its European-style salamis are leading the trend towards cleaner ingredient products that taste authentically delicious while still supporting the health of its consumers, the planet, and all animals."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🐟 Sea & Believe (Newly Opened)

HQ: IrelandRaising: $3M USDExisting investors: SOSVStatus: Just OpenedCEO: Jennifer O BrienPitch: "Sea & Believe is a food tech company that is developing a range of alternative proteins (Plant based Seafood) creating an awesome seafood experience using Irish seaweed, microalgae, and other novel protein sources to create the flakiness of a real fish."

+ Learn More / View Deck / Request Intro

🦑 Tandem Repeat Inc (Closing Soon)

HQ: USARaising: $2M USDExisting investors: Climate Capital Collective and Senel Family OfficeStatus: Closing SoonCEO: Melik DemirelPitch: "Tandem Repeat is a synthetic biology and materials science company that eliminates plastic pollution and minimizes the dependence on animal based products with a unique all-natural performance fabric that is sustainable, strong, flexible, self-healing, thermally responsive and friendly to existing manufacturing processes."

Feeling overwhelmed by Deal Flow?

Join the FoodHack Syndicate where we select the top startups, diligence the deals, win the allocations, and invest as Angels with tickets of $5k and up. There's 150+ of us already investing - currently closing up a stealth fungi farm play -apply here

🔥 Popular Last Week 

🐟 Esencia Foods (Newly Opened) - Esencia is building the future of seafood and fish based on mushroom mycelium using solid state fermentation. Raising €400k EUR.

🚜 WeFarm (Searching lead) - Wefarm is bringing online a community of 500m small scale farmers to share their experience and knowledge as well as buy products they need to run their farm on the marketplace. Raising: $4M USD

+ there's 60 other companies raising now - request an intro if you'd like to chat with their founders.

👀 Fund Spotlight: The Planet Fund

👋 Founders: Brent Hoberman, Henry Lane Fox and George Northcott📆 Founded: 2021💰 Fund Size: £100M💡 The idea: “Planet Fund, which aims to close the funding gap for seed-stage climate firms, provides entrepreneurs with Founders Factory’s holistic approach to company formation, including high-conviction money, execution assistance, and an unrivalled network. Planet Fund will focus on broad sustainability themes, including decarbonisation, resource preservation, climate resilience and the circular economy.."👀 Portfolio inc: n/a

💡 Good Reads & Tweets

🦠 Molecular and Cellular Factories: As lab space and bioreactors are in short supply, and the growth factors needed have their own issues - many companies are rethinking how they achieve their animal-free goals. 

Via various processes, including three types of fermentation or plant molecular farming, plants, yeast or microbes (or anything that’s abundant and grows quickly) act as mini cell factories that are able to produce proteins or foods at scale.

The types of ‘chassis’ (aka the structural framework) used as cell factories include bacteria, microbes, fungi, plant cells and algae, among others. 

More on that here.

😅 Wild read of the week: how a DAO voted to "refund" their seed investor.

 🍔 Fast Food Margins: Good thread by the former pricing manager for Wendy’s describing why cheap burgers cost what they do.

🥑 Mystery solved. 

💡 Founders made or nurtured? I really enjoyed this listen from the MP of Pear VC on can you "make" a great founder. TLDR: Environment matters A LOT - and we can engineer environment - some of the best engineered environments are within startups and that's why we have the Paypal-Mafia, Rappi-Mafia and in FoodTech the Infarm-Mafia.

My takeaway: constantly surround yourself with ambitious people who push your bar - either in person, or virtually. 

😅 Bit of Fun

Or the rise of the Pre-A.

Thanks for reading this far - and please let me know what did you think of today's edition?

😁 Love It 😐 Meh 😕 Hate it

Arman Anatürk Co-Founder & CEO @FoodHack (HackVentures)

Disclaimer: ‍Investing in startups and early stage businesses involves risks, including illiquidity, lack of dividends, loss of investment and dilution. This communication is intended for experienced investors, with sufficient experience and knowledge to understand the processes and risks involved. Do your DD, make your own decisions, invest aware, your capital is at risk.

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